


burning underneath

by witching



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 12:56:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16723839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witching/pseuds/witching
Summary: Rose keeps having dreams about the Doctor, different from the dream that told her to go to Norway. She dreams about the things they did together, and the things they didn't quite do together, and what could have been.





	burning underneath

**Author's Note:**

> The request was tenrose & "things you didn't say at all," and that seemed super sad so I made it self-indulgent wish fulfillment fix-it fic, but still sad. I contain multitudes.  
> Title from the Mountain Goats' "The Recognition Scene" because I'm emotional but the line "I'm gonna miss you when you're gone" was too on the nose so I picked a different part of the song.

              It was a dream, Rose told herself, only a dream. She repeated it so many times that she almost convinced herself, almost shoved it down and tried her best to ignore the nagging feeling that something was happening. That she needed to go, go, go.

              Go to Norway, for some reason. She didn’t question it, really, because it was only a dream, until it wasn’t. She thought, and her family understood, it would be better to go all the way to Norway and find nothing than to ignore the possibility that it was real. She was being called, summoned, and she couldn’t stomach the idea of not showing up if he was waiting for her.

              In the time after, when she was trying so hard to go back to living a life without him, she held onto that dream. There were bits that she remembered vividly in her waking hours, the parts that told her where to go and when. A map in her subconscious.

              Then there were the shadows of memory that teased her in the daylight, the quiet promise of something that she desperately needed. The things that haunted her, though she didn’t know if they were snippets of a half-remembered dream or figments of her imagination. Sometimes she swore she heard him crying, and that was the worst. Other times, she recognized the cadence of his voice in the back of her mind, always too soft to pick out individual words.

              She kept dreaming about him. The dreams got stronger as work progressed with the dimension cannon, and the memories more vivid. These dreams, though, she knew couldn’t be real. She considered the possibility that her subconscious was trying to prepare her for the inevitable, that the dimension cannon would fail and she would never get back to him.

              She tried not to think about that too much. Instead, she thought about those dreams. She thought about them a lot. Jackie told her (and Pete told her and Mickey told her and Cynthia from work told her and Jean at the café told her) that it wasn’t healthy to dwell so much on them, that they weren’t real. But they were real, in a way she could never explain to them.

              Each dream began the same as when it had actually happened, in the waking world. But they never ended the way she remembered. Something shifted, somewhere, and suddenly her memories of her time with him turned out with a happy ending. Only in her dreams, but it was just what Rose needed to give her hope, right now.

* * *

 

              In one dream, Rose was angry, jealous, insecure, and she stormed out of a coffee shop after the Doctor, put him on the spot.

              “You just leave us behind. Is that what you’re gonna do to me?”

              “No. Not to you.” His face was stone, his voice harsh. It was not a reassurance.

              She pushed. “But Sarah Jane – you were that close to her once, and now you never even mention her. Why not?”

              The Doctor looked at her with eyes as deep as the night sky. “I don’t age,” he said plainly. “I regenerate. But humans decay, you wither, and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone you –,” he cut himself off abruptly.

              “What, Doctor?” Rose waited, her resolve wavering.

              He let out a small, quiet sigh. “Someone that you love.”

              Rose’s heartbeat pounded in her ears. She looked at the Doctor, just looked at him, studied his face, sorting out his reaction to his own words. She knew what regret looked like on him, and she saw the beginnings of it creeping into his expression. His brow furrowed, his mouth set. She raised a hand to his cheek, smoothing her thumb over the harsh line of his lips. He closed his eyes and leaned into the touch gently.

              “I am going to stay with you,” she murmured, “for as long as you want me.”

              “Hardly,” the Doctor said with a sad smile. “You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can’t spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on, alone.”

              “Well, I’m here now. I’m here for a while. Can we just have that?”

              He nodded. “Yeah, I think we can.”

* * *

 

              The second dream started with Ida Scott, every time. With her voice through the comm, saying, “He fell into the pit. And I don’t know how deep it is, miles and miles and miles.”

              Rose felt her blood freeze. “But what do you mean, he fell?”

              “I couldn’t stop him,” Ida said. “He said your name.”

              Zach didn’t take the comm from Rose. She held onto it, her only tether to him, her only hope. “What did he say, exactly?”

              Ida breathed a sad sigh. “He said, ‘If you talk to Rose, tell her I love her.’”

              Rose inhaled sharply. She vaguely registered that she had dropped the comm. Every nerve in her body went numb. He couldn’t have fallen. The Doctor didn’t do things like that, he didn’t just fall into pits, he came back for her, always. And he didn’t say things like that, either, it sounded like a goodbye. There were no goodbyes between them, not ever, they always found each other again.

              Then she found herself back on the TARDIS, the danger having passed, swept up in the Doctor’s arms. As it should be. The interim was unimportant, she knew how it had gone. All that mattered was that she thought the Doctor was gone for good, she thought she had lost him, and he came back for her. He always came back for her. And she seized the opportunity, and she held onto him. She didn’t ask him about the beast, and she didn’t worry about what it had said. She threw her arms around his neck and let him lift her into the air, and she kissed him. It was almost too quick to be a kiss, a brief but firm connection before she buried her face in his chest.

              “Hello,” he said, when her feet were back on the ground.

              She looked up at him. “I got your message.”

              “Oh, I think I got yours, too,” he said with a grin. “Loud and clear.”

              “You can’t just go jumping into pits, you stupid…” Rose shook her head, tightening her grasp on his arms.

              “In my defense –,”

              “No,” Rose interrupted. “Just… I’m glad you’re safe.”

              He pulled her into a tight embrace, holding her close to him, her arms wrapped around his waist, her face to his chest. She breathed him in, absorbed his warmth. They stood together, intertwined, reveling in each other's existence, for what seemed like forever.

              "I love you, too," Rose whispered, and she heard both his hearts skip a beat.

* * *

 

              The third dream was the one that gave her the most hope, that left her feeling emptiest when she awoke. In this dream, she stood on a beach.

              “I love you,” she said, hardly managing to get the words out past her tears.

              He swallowed. “Quite right, too,” he said quietly. “And I suppose, if it’s my last chance to say it…” He looked directly in her eyes. “Rose Tyler…”

              There was a flash of blinding light, something that felt like an earthquake, and the distinct scent of grapefruit in the air for just one moment. It ended as quickly as it had begun. Rose and the Doctor looked at each other, mouths agape, catching up with the world.

              Rose spoke first, a cautious whisper. “What just happened?”

              “I don’t know.” He held the sonic screwdriver to his ear, fiddling with the controls. “It seems like… but that can’t be – is it?”

              “What? What’s going on?” An edge of panic crept into Rose’s voice, already exhausted with tears.

              The Doctor didn’t say anything. He stepped forward, closing the gap between them, and reached out to her. Two hands, warm and solid and real, cradled her face as she gasped softly. He leaned down to press his lips to hers, an urgent kiss that expressed everything he couldn’t put into words.

              When the Doctor pulled back, an eternity had passed. Rose took a moment to catch her breath before asking, “How did that happen?”

              “I don’t know.” He looked around, as if drinking in the existence of this world. “Looks like instead of just closing the walls, the two universes merged into one.”

              “You mean…” She raised her hand to her face to rest on top of his.

              “I’m here,” he said, resting his forehead on hers. “Really, actually. I’m here and I’m staying here.”

              “You’re here,” she echoed. She paused for a moment before remembering something, looking up at him expectantly. “I think you were about to say something, right before…?”

              He breathed a small laugh, turning his head to speak into her ear. There was a painful moment of anticipation before he said, “I love you.”

              And then she woke up. There was the rub, she always woke up. As she remembered more and more, it became harder and harder for her to ignore the dreams during the day and focus on her work. Her work would bring her back to him, she told herself. Her work would bring them together again, and then she could say all the things she never got to say before.


End file.
